


Your Animals Are All Alone

by postinghumorouslyposthumously



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Crying, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, POV Remus Lupin, PTSD, Post-Azkaban, Remus Lupin is shit at feelings, Remus Lupin represses his feelings, Sad, Second War with Voldemort, Twelve Years is a Long Time, We Are Having Some Feelings, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 15:15:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19231693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postinghumorouslyposthumously/pseuds/postinghumorouslyposthumously
Summary: '“Being with you feels like wasting time.”Sirius gaped. His eyes wide, looking up at me. I just looked back at him, still trailing my fingers gently up and down his arm, still holding him. As if I had just said something mildly sweet, or at least inconsequential.'-A snippet. A snapshot. A little, not very deep few moments in which realizations are had and feelings are much better when left unexplored.





	Your Animals Are All Alone

**Author's Note:**

> This is very sad and short and unedited, but I was having a lot of feelings and thus produced the following.  
> Fair warning: It's not actually very good, but I wanted to post anyway because FEEL MY PAIN. 
> 
> And if you want to explicitly feel said pain, I recommend giving MsKingBean89 's All The Young Dudes a read. Haven't quite finished it yet, and it wasn't actually the inspiration behind this work, but dear GOD that fic has me messed up. 
> 
> Also, highly recommend giving Amanda Palmer's "Do It With a Rockstar" a listen, because 1) Amanda Fucking Palmer is amazing and deserves your ears and the song is absolutely amazing regardless. 2) it gives me very strong Post-Azkaban Sirius/Remus vibes and it breaks my soul every time I listen.

_Do you wanna go back home?_

_Your animals are all alone_

_There’s some chicken waiting on the stove_

_and your cousin_ _left his DVD of "Swingin’ in the 70s"_

_Do you wanna go back home?_

_Check your messages and charge your phone?_

_Are you really sure you want to go?_

_When you could do it with a rockstar_

_Do It With a Rockstar_

 

***

 

“Being with you feels like wasting time.”

Sirius gaped. His eyes wide, looking up at me. I just looked back at him, still trailing my fingers gently up and down his arm, still holding him. As if I had just said something mildly sweet, or at least inconsequential.

But I meant it. Don’t know why I said it, though. There was something about Sirius that always made my impulse control fly out the window, though. That wasn’t new. 

Sirius’ lips parted. My chest cinched at his hurt.

“What...what d’you s’pect me to say to that?” Sirius asked, swallowing thickly.

I let my gaze trail over his face. Taking in his pretty features. I went to raise my other hand to touch his cheek, run my thumb over the soft skin underneath his eye. I stopped quickly, though, certain that the act wouldn’t be appreciated at the current moment. 

“I don’t know,” I said gently. 

Sirius’ mouth closed. His eyes swam, and then he sat up. I wanted him to lay back down. Lay on my arm again. He braced his elbow against his updrawn knee, and fisted his hand in his hair. His shoulders shook slightly, and I ran my fingertips up and down his back, ghosting over the notches of his spine. Sirius tensed. He whipped his head around to look at me.

“What the hell would you tell me that for?!” He shouted at me, and I closed my eyes briefly and flinched. Then, I inhaled and looked at him again. Sirius’ eyes were frantic. He pushed his hair back roughly, and then curled into himself.

“Sirius,” I said evenly.

“Could you just show some fucking emotion, Moons?” Sirius asked. His voice had wavered at the beginning, then broken, then trailed off with my name a pitiful whine.

I thought back to the moment when someone, whoever it was, maybe just a letter brought by an owl, told me that James and Lily were dead. Peter was dead. And it was all Sirius’ fault.

I thought back to the more recent moment of finding out that it wasn’t really Sirius. No, instead, it was Peter.

Regardless, for twelve years, I was completely alone.

So, how did I cope with that? Loneliness?

The same way I did before.

Only, I was older now. So, better at it.

I swept feelings off the table, and buried my head in anything other than thoughts of _messrs. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs._ And Lily. And Harry. And everyone else who wasn’t alive or sane or reachable.

I reached out for Sirius again, and he flinched back.

“What the hell-- _why_ are you--just--” Sirius spoke in frustrated fragments, pulling on his hair. Finally, I sat up. Sirius wrapped his arms around himself and hung his head, hiding his face.

I pushed his hair back and tucked it behind his ears. His teeth were digging into his lower lip, and he was crying and shaking and my chest cinched but I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t make my face move. Couldn’t cry, like the lump in my throat told me I wanted to. I set my hands on the outside of both his knees.

“ _Why?_ ” Sirius asked, looking up at me, meeting my eye for a second before he couldn’t anymore and looked away. “Why are you _here, then?”_ Sirius asked, and sniffed, and hiccuped.

“I can’t not be,” I replied, and I felt terrible. Terrible that I couldn’t express it to him. Express anything. Make myself feel it any deeper. I didn’t want to feel it any deeper. Those are dangerous games, and I didn’t _want_ to. Sirius didn’t deserve that, but Sirius didn’t deserve a lot of things. Neither did I. And yet.

Sirius raised his arm, braced his hand on his head, burying his face against his forearm like someone protecting themself from an explosion, or a beating.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I moved closer, and pushed my hands down his thighs, then up his sides, and pushed my hands around to his back, spreading my fingers out and feeling too-prominent bones. Sirius cried harder, and shoved my arms back in one short, jerky action.

“ _Stop_!” He shouted. I leant back. “Just stop,” he said again, he looked away, at some other point in the room, tears streaming down his cheeks. All his breaths catching before he could fully complete them.

I wanted to say I’m sorry, but I couldn’t, so I wanted him to let me hold him. I ran my tongue over my teeth, licked my lips then bit them.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said that,” I said.

“You don’t sound fucking _sorry_ ,” Sirius bit, snapping his gaze in my direction.

I swallowed. My chest pinched.

“I’m--I’m sorry,” I said.

Sirius squeezed his eyes shut, and pushed his hands through his hair.

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

“Would you stop saying that?” Sirius asked angrily, brows pinched. Then he stopped. His breathing was still not good, but he kept his eyes closed for several seconds, and when he opened them again the furrow between his brows relaxed, and he wasn’t actively crying anymore.

“Why don’t you leave if you’re wasting your time?” Sirius asked, and it looked painful.

My vision was getting eaten up at the edges. I realized I didn’t know when I’d stopped breathing, but that at some point, I had, and I hadn’t taken a breath since. I did now, a sharp one, but I tried to be subtle about it.

“I meant…” I swallowed again. My throat was dry. I closed my eyes and, rather than take the time to gather my thoughts like I should have, I let a few seconds tick by in silence. Sirius let me have them.

“I don’t know what I mean, Padfoot.” I said, opening my eyes and wetting my lips. It wasn’t entirely true. If I searched my head for a moment, I might find half an explanation, maybe. But I didn’t want to give it to Sirius. It probably wouldn’t make things better.

Sirius stared at me. That new way of staring at me that he had that wasn’t quite describable. Blank and accusing and wary and flat. He sniffed.

“What’s wrong with you?” He asked miserably.

I didn’t take offense. He didn’t say it with contempt. I understood what was going through Sirius’ head, for once. _What’s wrong with you?_ A lament on the twelve years that had passed, on all that had broken and fallen apart, at how much space was between us. Remorse and regret and sadness and anger. I’m angry with you. I’m angry _with_ you.

I inhaled, and the exhale shuddered.

Sirius moved, and moved back into my space. He pressed himself into my side, and put his head on my shoulder, and I wrapped my arms around him and leaned back against the headboard. Sirius kept crying. Because maybe he was realizing, like I was realizing, that there was no way we could fix this. He couldn’t pretend he was seventeen. He couldn’t have it back.

I couldn’t have this back.

My face screwed up. The corners of my eyes crinkled, and my jaw got tight, and my nose scrunched, and I couldn’t help it if I wanted to and tears welled up and started rolling down my cheeks and one onto the corner of my mouth and it tasted salty and it was the first time I’d cried in a long time.

I closed my eyes and saw us. We were seventeen. We were graduating soon, but not yet. Sirius and James were laughing because they’d just done something Brilliant and Amazing and Revolutionary. Peter was grinning in the background. Lily was shaking her head, but looking at James in that way she looked at James that was everything the same as when James looked at her. Marlene and Dorcus, and Alice and Frank, and my mom and my dad and the Shack and nights spent crammed underneath the cloak, checking the map. Back when Sirius’ and I’s biggest fights were about the moon. Back when James was still _over_ the moon about his newly blooming relationship with Lily. Back when Peter was still our brother. Back when we were scared about our futures, but we weren’t in them yet.

I held the bony, underfed, sleep deprived, shaking form of Sirius Black, and wondered if maybe nothing would be better. But I didn’t want to let go. So I didn’t. And I didn’t want to think about the future, so I didn’t. And I didn’t want to feel anything, except the skin under my fingertips and his arms wrapped vice-tight around my middle, so I didn’t. I buried my face in the crook of his neck, and we stayed like that, curled up tight around each other like creatures. Like statues. Barely breathing. We stayed like that for a while; not feeling bad about using each other to numb everything else, and pretending to be seventeen. We stayed like that for a while. We stayed like that for a while. We stayed like that for a-

**Author's Note:**

> Remus Lupin is one repressed motherfucker. Sirius Black is on the verge of a mental break and something else.  
> There was a lot that wasn't said above. A lot that Remus Lupin choose not to accept. Think about. Acknowledge. Let take effect on him. These characters and their arc is one of the most depressing stories I've ever had the misfortune to get attached to.  
> Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed it if you were looking for a tiny little angst fill. Leave me a comment if you want, I cherish them.


End file.
